The wind was still screaming when Cal bolted the door.

He’d stacked the last of the firewood against the stove, double-checked the latch on the shutter, and hung his wet jacket on a nail by the window. Hadley sat cross-legged on the floor, tracing the edge of a chipped mug with her thumb. She hadn’t spoken since she let him in.

Outside, the snow kept falling. Heavy. Horizontal. The kind that could trap you for days.

They weren’t going anywhere.

“You always disappear when it gets hard?” Cal asked quietly.

She looked up. No anger. Just tired. “Sometimes. Yeah.”

He nodded once, settling onto the floor across from her. “You said the truth isn’t just yours. Then whose is it?”

She hesitated. Not from fear. From weight.

“There was a research group,” she said finally. “Out of the university in Missoula. Funded by a private partner, off-the-books. Behavioral stuff. Sleep. Memory. Trauma response.”

“And you were a subject?”

“I was a researcher,” she said. “Then I became the subject.”

Cal’s stomach turned. “By choice?”

Hadley looked past him, into the fire.

“At first. Then… not really.”

She picked up the notebook from the table - the one she’d been writing in off and on since he arrived - and flipped to the back. A name was scrawled on the last page.

J. Ellory Vance

Cal stared at it. “Who is he?”

“He ran the program. It was his idea - to see if memory could be suppressed in targeted ways. Surgical amnesia, they called it.”

“And you?”

“I volunteered. After my brother died. I wanted to forget, just for a while. But it worked too well. I couldn’t stop it. I started forgetting things I needed.”

Her voice cracked, just slightly.

“They said it was reversible. It wasn’t. So I left.”

The wind outside picked up again - a low moan through the seams of the cabin.

Cal moved closer. Sat beside her.

“Why come here?”

“Because no one would look. Because I remembered this place before I remembered my own name.”

“And Vance?”

“I think he found me. Or sent someone who did.”

The wind slammed something against the side of the house. They both flinched.

Cal stood, crossed to the window. No one there.

“You’re safe now,” he said.

Hadley looked at him, and for a moment, her eyes didn’t look tired at all.

“No one who remembers what they did will ever be safe,” she said.

Then she stood, crossed to the fireplace, and threw the notebook in.

It caught instantly, flames curling the pages into black.

Continue reading (Chapter-2) » The storm won’t last forever. But what waits after it clears is more than just weather — and they’re not alone on this mountain.